Institutional networks of support and local food production

Abstract

This article deals nith an alternative organizational form called, by the author, "institutional networking". This new form, in reality constitues a new organizational paradigm aimed at occupying an intermediate position between the consecrated bureaucratic rigidity and. the extreme spantaneity of informal groups.

In contradistinction with the administrative solutions. largely employed, such as, commissions, working groups, task force, and so on. "institutional networking" interferes, among other things, with the struture of personal relations, the power pattern and the set of institutional roles, in a way quite apart from the traditional bureaucratic features.

Questions related to organizational power could not be through1y examined in this study, but the author makes clear that, once established new organizational roles, the' power exerciser within a network is rather distinct from the formalistic and prescribed one of ordinary bureaucratic organizations.